I didn’t open the office the next day. Not that it mattered as I had no appointments scheduled and everyone was well trained to remember that I only held a walk-in clinic one night a week, which had already passed.
I was a bit sluggish as I made myself busy tidying up the house from the battle of the night before. Angela, Evan, and Megan were all very helpful in helping me with this task, for which I was grateful. It was well after noon before we finished, and Peter was still sound asleep.
I expressed my concern to Megan while she joined me for a cup of soup and a tuna sandwich on the back patio. The sun felt soothing, as if it was melting away any remnants of stress that our chocolate fest the
night before might have left behind.
“I need to get to my lab to test that powder,” Megan said as she camouflaged a burp with her hand. “It’s too bad you don’t have one here.”
“I have a pretty
Once we were certain that she had all she needed for her lab, Peter and I left her alone to concentrate on the task at hand. She hoped to have an antidote for the powder within the day, but couldn’t guarantee it. She repeatedly lamented over not knowing what kind of magic was being used by the zombie maker. Apparently, different magic used different energy.I had so much to learn and absorb…. and believe.Peter suggested we get out of the house for a while. He felt that the change in scenery would do me some good. At his suggestion of a picnic by a nearby lake, I eagerly gathered things together to make it happen. Within an hour we were spreading out a blanket on the banks of a beautiful, peaceful lake.I lay back and reveled in the sun’s heat as it caressed my face. “How did you know about this place? I’ve been here much longer and had no idea.”“I found it yesterday while searching
My head ached, and I had a bad, metallic taste in my mouth as I slowly regained consciousness. I could hear activity around me long before my eyes were able to focus enough to let me see where I was and who I was with.Janet had her back to me. She was talking to a large woman with extremely thin, jet black hair that hung straight and stringy around her shoulders. When she stepped aside to allow me a clear view, I gave a tiny gasp at the sight of her. She was so fat that it rested in rolls down her body, reminding me of the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. When she laughed at something Janet said, the fat on her body jiggled like Jell-O long after she’d finished. I found it mesmerizing.When she realized that I was conscious and staring at her, her face darkened, and she said something to Janet. Her minion turned to look at me and then spoke to her before coming my way.“Where am I?” My mouth was so dry it
I grew weary of the rambling voices and began to allow my body to float away as a means of escape from them. I was reveling in the sensation of floating in air when I felt someone yank me back to reality. My arms and legs were free from their bindings and the circulation was being roughly rubbed back into them.“Vickie, can you hear me?” managed to reach my mind. I recognized the male voice, but just couldn’t place it. “Vickie, answer me. Wake up, sweetheart. Can you hear me? Wake up?” Who was that man speaking? I knew that I knew him, but I just couldn’t think his name. It was so frustrating to not be able to put a name to thevoice, but I just couldn’t.“She’s not responding!”“She’s badly dehydrated. Here, try to get this past her lips. It should help.”I smiled with satisfaction when I was able to put Megan’s name to the second voic
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t trying to help heal someone or something. As a little girl on my family’s dairy farm, I made it my mission to help my father with the care of the animals. Such was my dedication that when I found a baby bird that fell out of its nest, I took great pains to nurse it to health and see that it was able to care for itself before I set it free.Originally, I was determined to heal others the old-fashioned way, with herbs and energy work. I’d read plenty of how-to books on the subject and even taken a few online courses. When I left the farm as soon as I graduated high school and moved to find my way in the nearby city of Winchester, Virginia. I even went as far as to open my own holistic practice.It was when I attended a six-week course through the local college’s community education program on herbal remedies that I decided that it was okay to integrate herbal and energy healing wi
Wolf Junction may not have been as advanced both socially and economically as the rest of the country, but it was filled with history. To me, this made up for a lot.The home I’d rented was an enormous Victorian style house with a gorgeous wrap around porch. It was far too large for one person, but it had a two-room office set up with a space to act as the waiting room and its own entrance. I was of the frame of mind that having my office under the same roof where I lived would reduce my overhead. After all, I’d built up a considerable amount of debt putting myself through school. Fortunately, my holistic care skills paid for most of my living expenses during my years of education, but there was still the loan for the actual cost of schooling looming over me. As luck would have it, the place came partially furnished. So, I lived in a one-hundred plus year old house that was the size of a mini-hotel with enough
Angela McGraw was a few years older than me, but not by much. We looked to be about the same size too, but that’s where the similarities ended. Where my hair was sleek and dark, and my skin fair and unblemished, she sported a coppery head of wiry curls and flesh so peppered with freckles that it was impossible to count them. As my eyes traced them to the collar of her pale blue cotton blouse, I had to fight the urge to ask if they continued onto her back and chest. I guessed they did, but that was just a guess. I envied her those striking green eyes. Mine were such a common brown. I noticed that they resembled rich emerald when she spoke passionately on a subject; which was often.She’d been working as the county’s traveling social worker for five years. It was easy to tell that she loved her job by the way she lost herself into conversing about it whenever the opportunity arose.She was less outgoing and gene
Life was going so well that I’d completely forgotten about the fact that I’d taken the job with the intention of being the savior who discovered what was causing so many deaths. It was probably because there had been no deaths since my arrival. That changed on the anniversary of my fifth month in town.It was a Wednesday evening. It had been a particularly grueling day with difficult and uncooperative patients. Old man Smithson’s gout was acting up again and, of course, he had to argue with me as to what diet worked best to prevent the gout that was returning more and more frequently. Grannie Oleson had yet another asthma attack. As hard as I tried to convince her that she was allergic to the twelve cats she owned, I got nowhere. So, I simply treated her with herbs to help keep her passageways as clear as could be expected under the circumstances and wrote a prescription for an inhaler that Iwas certain she’d
I’d had no call to be around Zacharias Bolt before Jacob’s death. I thought it unfortunate that I found him to be a bit odd, since his was the only funeral home for several towns and I was the recently appointed official county medical examiner.Zacharias’ family had been in stiff competition with the Crowley family for the funeral business of the area for several generations. This, along with an over-abundance of fumes from embalming chemicals were surely what lend to his unlikeable personality. The smirk on his narrow and pinched face when he inspected the remnants of the Crowley morgue while delivering Jacob’s corpse to me was an immediate indication as to the person I’d be dealing with. He wasted no time comparing his state of the art set up to my pathetic -yes, he used the word ‘pathetic’- and antiquated one while speculating on the poor workmanship that surely was produced as a result.He clearly had no